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Transportation equipment industry

Ford's Analytical Warranty System Upgrades with Second-Generation NUMA-Q 2000 Servers

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. announced that Ford Motor Company, the world's second-largest vehicle manufacturer, has upgraded its Analytical Warranty System (AWS) with new second-generation NUMA-Q(TM) 2000 servers from Sequent. The AWS is a corporate-wide data warehouse that combines all vehicle and warranty claims and related parts information on Ford cars and trucks from the past 10 years into a single searchable repository. This upgrade is expected to improve quality and reduce warranty costs for Ford.

Key Takeaways:

  • Ford's Analytical Warranty System (AWS) is a corporate-wide data warehouse that combines all vehicle and warranty claims and related parts information from the past 10 years.
  • Sequent delivered a data center environment for Ford's AWS that surpasses the abilities and functionality of a mainframe.
  • The system's success led Ford to consolidate three disparate decision support warranty systems into one to track warranty data from the US, Canada, and Europe.
  • Ford was able to significantly reduce annual expenditures by unplugging both the US and European mainframe systems.
  • The latest upgrade was based on Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 server running the Intel Pentium II Xeon processors.
  • With more than two terabytes (TB) of capacity, AWS supports employees from finance, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, and quality with as many as 145 concurrent users.
  • Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 systems support up to 64 processors via an innovative interconnect technology called IQ-Link.
  • The introduction of the second generation NUMA-Q 2000 systems enabled Sequent to post leading industry standard benchmark results for data warehouse query and online transaction processing performance.

Statistics:

  • AWS supports more than 2 terabytes (TB) of capacity.
  • The system has as many as 145 concurrent users.
  • Ford was able to significantly reduce annual expenditures by unplugging both the US and European mainframe systems.
  • Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 systems support up to 64 processors.
  • The introduction of the second generation NUMA-Q 2000 systems enabled Sequent to post leading industry standard benchmark results for data warehouse query and online transaction processing performance.

Sources:

  • Business Wire, April 26, 1999 - "Sequent Delivers Data Center Environment to Ford Motor Company for Analytical Warranty System Upgrades"
  • Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. - "NUMA-Q 2000 Data Center Servers"
  • Oracle Corporation - "Oracle Database"

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